Shaun Walker’s outstanding piece of work on the run-up to the Russian invasion in 2022 (A war foretold: how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them, 21 February) is by no means the only example of defence and intelligence analysts foreseeing catastrophic acts of war. Ironically, one of the classic examples, exhaustively analysed, is the US failure to anticipate the deadly Japanese attack on Hawaii, with all its monstrous consequences, despite a myriad of clear signals.

David Kahn, the US historian and author, attributes this fatal myopia to “mirroring”, which made analysts incapable of imagining Japanese tactics. Couple this with Simon Tisdall’s typically forensic article on the diplomatic failure since 2022 (Ukraine is the biggest and most consequential of all the American betrayals, 21 February) to demonstrate how out of touch the Nato top brass and their acolytes were recently in frantically calling for massive rearmament.

The evolution of the war reflects far more on failed diplomacy and the increasing vulnerability of traditional military logistics to soft power and anarchic warfare. The drones steer the war while the heavy artillery merely pulverises infrastructure, resulting in a costly stalemate. There can now be no doubt, as Tisdall has argued so consistently, that there is a fatal weakness in the west, but it is in the level of commitment and ability to seek diplomatic, financial and intelligence routes to overthrow Vladimir Putin. The generals, meanwhile, are dinosaurs.
Neil Blackshaw
Alnwick, Northumberland

Thanks for your intelligence profile of the lead up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The points about US and British intelligence lacking credibility due to false information about the Iraq war are important to remember. Unsurprisingly, no one in either government seems to understand why no one took their advice on board. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but think, if they were so certain in the UK, why the chaotic response to the post-invasion human displacement?

In 2022, when intelligence became reality, the EU gave fleeing Ukrainians the right to live and work there for three years. The UK kept its doors closed and demanded visas, while also providing no visa service in Ukraine. The Home Office minister for safe and legal migration, Kevin Foster, scrambled to address the catastrophe, tweeting about the “seasonal work scheme”. The government then rolled out programmes that relied on the goodwill of the UK population to assist traumatised refugees. Four years later, Ukrainians still have none of the legal rights or recognition of refugees, despite the word being repeated ad nauseam by politicians.

Ukrainians are in perpetual limbo – neither refugees nor migrants – and must renew the right to reside here every 18 months. Try building a career, renting a house or even getting an education with that slim “legal” status hanging over you. These policies show it isn’t just Europe that wasn’t paying attention.
Edie Shillue
Belfast

If by 2021 UK and US intelligence “had it right all along” about a decision by Russia for an invasion of Ukraine, as your special report says, did the British government seriously think that by sending the then foreign secretary Liz Truss to ride a tank in Estonia that November, they would frighten Vladimir Putin’s military into abandoning the invasion that came three months later?
Mark Lewinski-Grende
Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire